Art has helped me throughout changes in my life and dealing with my emotions and identity. My first move when I was eleven years old affected me. I had to change schools and make new friends and get used to a new home. I used drawing and my art skills to cope with all the changes in my life when I was younger. What I drew was something I saw in a movie once, so I decided to draw it because it had a lot of emotions in it. I connected my emotions to the emotions in my drawing because the changes I had to make in my school and friends were hard for me. I am a shy person who has some friends but has a hard time connecting with kids my own age. As I grew older and changed schools again for high school, I learned to draw better. I was able to use my art to express myself and my emotions when I was going through changes in my life. One of my art pieces represents happiness because I used to draw a lot of funny faces and my drawings just looked happy from how I drew them. One of the other emotions I drew was sometimes sad based on my mood and what was going on with my life at the time. My art and drawings helped me deal with my emotions as I went through changes in my lifetime. I still love to draw today but do not draw as often. I drew faces, characters from television, and flowers. Art is a good thing I learned to do to help me cope when I moved around, and I want to continue to use drawing whenever I feel like I need to whenever things are hard in my life.

– Shayla Caldwell

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more